


The Sticking Place

by boxoftheskyking



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Pre-Canon, bisexual Caleb, some canon era homophobia, some violence/death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-22
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2018-12-05 08:25:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11574219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxoftheskyking/pseuds/boxoftheskyking
Summary: “I can’t believe you’re leaving,” he says. “It’s dangerous, Caleb. You know you might not come back.”He looks earnest and frightened and he’s tilting a little on unsteady feet like he’s about to crash forward and shatter the distance between them.“You left first."There is more than one kind of courage.





	The Sticking Place

**Author's Note:**

> Yes the title is a roundabout Macbeth quote
> 
> I did not do more than a bit of research on period accurate whaling, but the details aren't the important part

Ben comes back to see him off, which he appreciates. He gets back to Setauket late, the rest of them already two or three cups in at the tavern, so the whole room goes up in a shout of “Tall-boy!” echoing Caleb’s delighted cry. Now, an hour later, Ben has that wide-eyed, little boy look he gets when he has too much to drink. He gets quiet, always has, not as used to drink as those brought up on Lucas Brewster’s strong cider. Caleb stays at his side, protective, trying not to think about Ben like this at Yale, drunk and sweet and vulnerable in the company of college boys, old professors with big hands and sharp grins. He keeps his shoulder pressed to Ben’s and says nothing about it, watching Abe argue with his brother while Anna and little Mary Smith laugh at them both.

Ben tugs on his sleeve and he leans in to smell his sweet and alcoholic breath. 

“Why do you have to go so far away?” Ben asks, big eyes and the last of baby fat still clinging to his cheeks, seventeen years and not far from graduating himself.

Caleb gives him a shake. “What adventures await me in Setauket, eh? Have to chase it, don’t I?”

Ben looks down into his mug and says nothing. 

Later, as he’s walking Ben back to his father’s house, Ben stops him with another tug on his sleeve.

“I can’t believe you’re leaving,” he says. “It’s dangerous, Caleb. You know you might not come back.”

He looks earnest and frightened and he’s tilting a little on unsteady feet like he’s about to crash forward and shatter the distance between them.

“You left first,” Caleb says, stupid and drunk, and Ben steps back.

“Be careful, my friend,” he says, reaching out to shake Caleb’s hand.

Caleb can’t think of anything to say, so he shakes and nods and watches Ben walk the path up to his front door.

No one comes with him to the harbor. He catches a ride in a cart full of sheep, hauls his own sack on his shoulder, and doesn’t look back.

 

He doesn’t take to everything as quickly as he thinks he ought, but it gives him something to focus on as he gets used to the shocking claustrophobia of blank sky and blank sea in every direction, the ship seeming to shrink around him for the first five weeks of travel. But he does catch on, keeps his head down, does his work, and finds the men he can make to laugh with a dirty joke or a bit of old song. There’s one man, Corcoran, a lanky redhead with a nose that’s healed crooked a few times, who takes to sitting beside him as they eat. 

One night, the sea still as paved road, Corcoran gets him by the elbow and yanks him back into a space between the spare boats.

“Cor— What the hell?” Caleb sputters, but Corcoran covers his mouth with a strong hand.

“Shut up. Here. Been a long time, we can help each other out.” Corcoran hisses and starts fumbling at the laces of Caleb’s trousers.

“Wait, we can’t—” Caleb starts, but the other man is stronger.

“Been too long, for you as well as me, I’m sure. Fuck. Not a sin if you think of a woman.”

“What? Shit, shit,” Caleb bangs his head back against the boat behind him, shock melting into something hot and urgent.

“Come on, you shite, get a hand on me before—” And God help him, Caleb does.

 

Corcoran seems to avoid him the next few days, and then a storm kicks up, the worst they’ve seen so far. The men are on deck for nearly thirty hours, awake for almost forty. At one point, straining to keep a hold on the lines in his hands, back aching and burning and the wind choking him with rain, sea spray, and blood from his own burst blisters, he thinks he sees Ben standing before him. He looks a bit older, face slimmer, long hair tied back and circles under his eyes. No one on deck can hear him over the gale so he lets himself laugh.

“Are you praying for me? Are you, Tall-boy? Are you thinking on your old friend?”

Ben vanishes and, less than an hour later, so does the storm. They still have to sleep in shifts, and as a newcomer Caleb draws the short straw and stays above for another few hours, putting everything to rights. 

The next night, vibrating with the thrill of being alive, he gives Corcoran a nod and heads back to the spare boats. One is partially splintered from the storm and will need repairs, but the space between is as sheltered as it was before.

“What’s your name?” he asks before the other can touch him. “Your Christian name.”

“Allan,” Corcoran says. “The fuck does it matter?”

Caleb shrugs and reaches for his hips.

“You got a girl back home?” Corcoran asks this time, rough callused hands making Caleb hiss.

“Might. Do you?”

“Aye. My Nellie. Eleanor.”

“What’s she like?”

“Round and soft. Slapped me once so hard she broke my nose. Dark and fair, fuck.”

“Right there, Jesus Christ.” Caleb almost can’t breathe, the cramped space, the smell of salt and sweat and whale oil. He feels Corcoran spill over his fingers and right as he’s about to follow he lurches forward and kisses him, hard, on the mouth. Corcoran pulls back and decks him, a solid right hook below his eye, and he goes down, stumbling out from between the boats. Corcoran hauls him up by the collar and spits in his face. 

“Don’t you ever, ever do that.” He lets Caleb fall back to the deck and stalks off. Caleb stays down for a minute, cleaning himself off, carefully directing his thoughts around the dangerous corners in his mind.

 

He assumes it will be over, then, and keeps himself to himself more or less. He’s always been likable, sure, and the men shift to make room for him at the mess tables, include him as the stories go around. A few give him a look like the one Corcoran had, and he tries to make himself look interested, but no one else offers. They’ve reached the whaling grounds by now, near Greenland, and the days are long and exhausting and exactly what he’s been hoping for. It’s a few weeks before Corcoran comes to him again—the bruise on his face has just about faded.

This time he says nothing, keeps his distance, only touches the way Corcoran does, no more, no less.

“Tell me about her,” Corcoran mutters to him. “Your girl back home.”

Caleb thinks for a moment. “Fair. Young. Well-read woman. Ah, fuck.”

“Can you see her, when you close your eyes?”

He does. “Yeah. Sitting quiet, with her Bible.”

“Bible? Ah, ah, yes, like that.”

“Preacher’s— Preacher’s daughter.”

“Oh shit, preacher’s daughter, pink and holy, fuck—” Corcoran presses him back against the rough wood and pants into his neck. “What’s her name?” he asks, pulling Caleb toward the edge.

 _Ben_ , Caleb thinks, blurring and gasping, and then, more dangerously,  _Allan_. “Anna,” he manages, and is proud of himself when her dark eyes follow him over the edge.

 

They’ve only lost one man so far this voyage, early on before Caleb really got to know him. He was an older man, and the one conversation Caleb had had with him was about his family back home. It’s a reality, of course, and they’ve each looked death in the face directly at least a few times. 

When Corcoran goes over, pulled in by the thrashing of a whale, he knows. They pull him out, surely, but he’s been submerged for too long and you can hear the water in his lungs when the mess goes quiet, and when Caleb sits beside him his skin burns with fever. The medic summons him from above decks, saying Corcoran’s been asking after him and it won’t be long now.

Caleb kneels down by his cot and adjusts the compress on his forehead.

“Fuckin’ shite, this is,” Corcoran wheezes. “Third trip out, fuck.”

“You’ll be fine,” Caleb murmurs, “it’ll be fine. Just think of your Nellie, eh? Dark and fair, right hook like a sailor.”

Corcoran laughs until he coughs, coughs until he chokes, and Caleb helps him roll onto his side so he can retch and spit into a bucket.

“And yours,” he asks, almost a whisper. “Your girl, what was her name?”

“There isn’t one,” Caleb says. “I made her up.”

“His name, then. What was his name?”

Caleb thinks, for a moment, then sees the light begin to flicker behind Corcoran’s eyes. “Allan,” he says. 

“Fuck,” the man mutters, but he does smile, slightly. And then he’s gone. 

Caleb lifts the body himself, helps wrap it in a scrap of sail. The captain reads a bit from a psalm and they send him over the side. No one touches him for the rest of the journey, whether out of respect or because they believe him cursed, he doesn’t know.

They make land again a month later, at Jacobshaven. It’s a small town, only one tavern, but even the smallest town has women looking to relieve a sailor of part of his earnings. She tells him her name is Jane, dark hair and dark eyes and smooth dark skin. She doesn’t talk much, just takes his money and takes him to bed, and he appreciates it. She lets him stay beside her for a long time, after, let’s him bring her off with his mouth again. She says she’s tired, he can stay if he likes but she’ll try to sleep. He puts the candle out as he goes.

 

He returns to Setauket a year later, not so much as a letter or a friendly face in the interim. He catches a ride again, alone, sack over his shoulder just as he’d left.

His uncle Lucas pats his cheeks with shaking hands and pulls him in close.

“Sure, you’ve grown,” he says, his warm voice sounding proud, a little sad.

“I was grown before I left, I think.”

“But look at you, lad. Sure, you’ve grown yet.”

The news isn’t as bad as he’d feared. Being away so long, there’d been deaths, marriages, children born and lost. But Ben and Samuel live, their father too, Abe and Anna and Selah and the rest. 

“Young Ben came back not two months ago,” Lucas says. “Fully graduated now, and turned Patriot, or so the gossip says.”

“Lord, politics. I suppose I’ll find him, then, have him catch me up.” 

Lucas grins at him. “You’ll find him in the church. He’s teaching lessons there, now. Latin, Greek, Hebrew. Some arithmetic, for whoever might have the time.”

“Sounds like Ben,” Caleb says, downs the rest of his cider and heads out with another hug for his uncle.

He does find him in the church, young Gideon Carver leaving with a book held tightly between both hands. He realizes, standing in the doorway and watching Ben shift his small desk to the side and straighten his books, that he should have thought about this. He should have thought of something to say, a joke, a surprise. All of these months he could have been looking forward to this, if he’d dared. 

In the end, he just steps through the door and says, “Ben.”

Ben looks up, and he is older now, a bit taller, face thinner. He looks tired. When he sees Caleb his eyes go wide and he holds on to the edge of the desk.

“Caleb? Christ, Caleb.” It feels like neither of them have moved, but suddenly they’re embracing in the middle of the aisle, Ben’s breath on his neck and his hand cupping the back of Ben’s neck.

When they pull back Ben’s eyes are wet and he won’t move more than half a step away. He runs his hand over Caleb’s beard and laughs, and Caleb grins up at him.

“You’re taller than me now, Tall-boy.”

“You’re alive. I didn’t— I didn’t know when you’d be back. If you’d come back.”

“Course I did.” He’s glad they did this here, in the empty church, somewhere private. He pulls Ben back in and rocks them a bit side to side. “Missed you, lad. I did.”

He thinks of kissing him, just once, but doesn’t dare. Not in the house of God, in his father’s church. He wants to tell him everything—or more than that, he wants to not have to tell it, to have some way beyond words to show him everything.

“Will you tell me all your adventures?” Ben asks, pulling him down into a pew.

“Here? For confession?”

Ben blushes. “No, of course not. I don’t know. Anywhere. I can’t believe you’re here. You really came back.”

“Did you think I’d drown?”

“No! No, of course not. Only I thought, maybe, after seeing all of the world, maybe you’d decide there wasn’t much to come back to.”

Caleb dares to grab his wrist. “I’m not going to leave you, Ben.” It’s heavy with history and intent, and he can’t look him in the eye after saying it. “I thought I saw you, a few times.”

“In Greenland?”

“At sea. Moments I thought— When maybe I wouldn’t come home, you know. And for just a moment, you were there. And then the skies opened— Well.”

Ben says nothing, both of them looking at their knees.

“Buy you a drink?” Ben says finally, and Caleb pulls back.

“There’s those Yalie manners.” He claps him on the shoulder and rises to go.

 

He stays at home a month before word comes that his old first mate has gotten a ship of his own, not a large one, but he has a place for Caleb if he wants it. He plans to be out at least two years, back around Greenland before perhaps turning south. He tells his uncle, who laughs and says he’s been counting the days until Caleb’s feet point him somewhere new. Before responding to the letter, he tucks it into a pocket and goes to find Ben.

He meets him on the road, heading home, and asks for a bit of his time. Ben laughs and slings and arm over his shoulder, steering them towards the woods.

“Fine day for it,” he says, grinning up at the dappled sunlight. “Couldn’t stay inside with the books, not today.”

When he feels they’re far enough that it’s truly just the two of them, he pulls Ben to a halt and hands him the letter.

“Two years,” Ben says flatly.

“It’s not uncommon.”

“I know. I know, it’s just. You just got back.”

“I wouldn’t leave for another month yet. Give him time to get the crew together. He’s a good man, he’ll be a competent captain. Give me a chance to move up, maybe as a boatsteerer.”

“You don’t have to explain it to me,” Ben says, handing the letter back. He turns away, towards the trees, but he doesn’t move.

“I won’t— If you don’t want me to, then—”

“What does that matter? You should do what—”

“I just, it feels like where I’m supposed to be. It fits, there, all of—whatever I am. I’m not a farmer, Ben.”

“I know that.”

“Or a scholar, a merchant, any—”

“I know that, Caleb, I know you, I just—” He runs his fingers through his hair and won’t turn back around.

“I won’t go if it will leave things bad between us.”

That gets his attention, and he looks sheepish when he finally meets Caleb’s eye.

“Of course it won’t. Of course, I’m happy for you. Really, I am, I’m just being selfish. I’ll just miss you, like I have.”

“And I you, Tall-boy. But I’ll be back, with more stories for you.”

Ben holds him by the shoulders, tightly. “You have to promise you’ll come back. You’ll be careful, and you’ll come home to me.”

There’s something raw and young and brave behind his eyes. Caleb’s mouth opens, but he can’t speak with the weight of all that courage and truth shining at him. He doesn’t dare.

Ben, brave, wonderful Ben, he dares. He pulls Caleb in by his coat and meets him halfway, his mouth as soft and warm as summer rain. Something catches in Caleb’s throat, and he wonders if he might be about to cry. He pushes it down and pushes closer, holding Ben by the hip and shoulder, unsure where to go from here. When they finally break apart, Ben is grinning down at him in wonder, as if he’s answered some almighty question from one of his books. He can’t help but respond, beaming up at him like a fool, like a boy.

“I’m going to miss you,” Ben says again, his eyes clouding. “It’s an ache in me, when you’re gone.”

Caleb touches his stomach, up to his chest, pressing his palm flat against his sternum. Ben holds onto his hand and keeps it close.


End file.
